In the USA, it often appears to me that our 2 party political system creates a great deal of ambiguity in just how much the Govco wants to interfere with business by enforcing the regulations already on the books. Both parties -claim- they want a "leaner" govco, one wants to make it smaller by getting out of individuals lives as much as possible, and the other wants to make smaller govco by getting out of the lives of corporations as much as possible. In my opinion, neither really gets out of anything.

In my opinion, I think the government here likes to show that they are serious regarding all safety issues but like so many other things, they implement legistlation and regulations but have no real way to police them.

As with all regulations, they are subject to an individuals interpretation and in practice, if everything were done by the book 100%, we would never leave home to get a job done.
Each person, Not the government, is responsible for their own and others safety.
If people would take the time to do a risk assessment before doing anything that could have serious implications, there would be no need for any regulations, But! not everyone thinks about safety untill the inevitable happens.

Sadly, the only time you do hear of anything being done to enforce health & safety is when some poor soul has already been killed and then the statement that we are only too familiar with comes out.
" we will learn from this incident "`